This shouldn't be here for a couple of reasons. I can't find Michelle Brand to ask if it's OK to post this; worse yet, I don't even know that it really was a dream. For all I know she just did a lot of acid that year. I mean, Berkeley 1971... what do you think?

But this comic had a huge impact on me as a kid. I never liked superhero comics--they were just muscle boys beating up people, and I faced that world every day at school. I'd been looking at underground comix for inspiration but they mostly didn't reflect my inner life either. I felt alone.

But Brand's stream-of-consciousness stuff made me see I could cartoon my dreams. Just go ahead! They didn't have to make sense to others. They just had to be me--the real me.

The next year I drew my first real comic. Technically bad, but my world. And ultimately all my dream-comics came because Brand dynamited a dam in my soul. (Well, OK, Aline Kominsky was a strong purgative too...)